


i hung the galaxy on you

by Ash_Cassidy97



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Phasma, Awkward Luke, Chewie is done with the Jedi family, Fail Jedi Luke, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, I'm not sure if that fits, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo Ren Throws A Tantrum, Largely it's just Anakin, Like sooooo done, Maz is awesome, Multi, Phasma Redemption, Protective Poe Dameron, That should've been tlj's title, like not really but he thinks so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 11:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13387293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: Rey grew up under a beating sun and ice cold nights. She had a Skywalker doll. Too bad the real life model was an asshole. And maybe people could say that she was hopeful because she was young. But they didn't grow up among the scraps of a bone-washed desert.And Luke gets that. He knew Han, Leia, and dozens of rebels who grew up in scraps. He had his whole life razed to the ground (he had a life). If he'd been Yoda, or Obi-Wan, or-maybe he'd know that fire lets new growth foster, resets the world to the way she wants it. But he was a patchwork Jedi, born of wars long ago. Maybe he wasn't suited for peace, the same way Anakin had been, the same way his father had been.And a girl wanted to learn anyway, because he forgot that he was a glorified hero for, as Leia often put it, being in the right place at the right time. And he expected to be found wanting, since he wasn't a legend, he wasn’t Old Ben or one of the great Jedi of years past. He didn't expect it to hurt so much, to bite at him.





	i hung the galaxy on you

 

Rey grew up under a beating sun and ice cold nights. She had a Skywalker doll. Too bad the real life model was an asshole. And maybe people could say that she was hopeful because she was young. But they didn't grow up among the scraps of a bone-washed desert.

 

And Luke gets that. He knew Han, Leia, and dozens of rebels who grew up in scraps. He had his whole life razed to the ground (he had a life). If he'd been Yoda, or Obi-Wan, or-maybe he'd know that fire lets new growth foster, resets the world to the way she wants it. But he was a patchwork Jedi, born of wars long ago. Maybe he wasn't suited for peace, the same way Anakin had been, the same way his father had been.

 

And a girl wanted to learn anyway, because he forgot that he was a glorified hero for, as Leia often put it, being in the right place at the right time. And he expected to be found wanting, since he wasn't a legend, he wasn’t Old Ben or one of the great Jedi of years past. He didn't expect it to hurt so much, to bite at him.

 

"You didn't try to save him?" she'd ask him, damning him for not having enough hope for the galaxy to burn.

 

Force, he hopes she never learns you can't save everybody.

 

"No." Because he'd learned that lesson done to his bones, had it burned under his skin where his hand used to be. If you're strong enough, sure enough, you survive to watch others die, and he was sick of  death.

 

And Yoda turned up to judge him for placing his faith in ancient books, rather than himself. They sat for a long time while the tree burned.

 

"You will not be the one to save Ben Solo, but you will not be his death, and that's no little thing," Old Ben tells him.

 

"I retreated here, rather than train another," Luke tells him. He had not become a wise hermit. He'd gotten grumpy with age, with failure. He was not Old Ben who'd only gotten kinder or Yoda who’d gotten wiser.

 

"You are not us, just as Rey will not be you."

 

"Hmmm. Good, change is," Yoda adds. And before Luke can find his thoughts- "Balance is always required. World shakers, even more so."

 

So he goes to see Ben one last time. Snoke is already dead and salt fills the air. It tastes like rust, like blood. And he leaves because he can do a lot more good when he's not trapped on a forgotten island.

 

He never sees Anakin anymore.

 

Rey was curled up on the Falcon after because for all her strength, she was still from nowhere, and no she had a plane full of bodies, all bundled up. She was fast on her way to becoming a legend, and she was already sick of all the death around her. Poe finds her.

 

He's good at that, hair-brained schemes and finding people who need folk to find them. But it's a learned trait. And most folks don't bother with the lost anymore. Some ghosts need to want to be seen.

 

"You okay?" He slides his way into the co-pilot's seat. Chewie is in the back, comforting some of the children.

 

Rey busies herself with switches. "Course I am." He reaches over and grips her hand tight. It's something he gave to the universe. You grab the next one over's hand and you run. She grips back. "Finn asleep?"

 

"Next to Rose, yeah." Rey nods, more tired than she was thirty seconds ago.

 

"You were sweet after him," Poe gets after a full minute. Good thing Leia wasn't paying him for his brains.

 

"So were you," Rey snaps back. She knows pining. Poe sighs and allows it.

 

"Who's sweet on who?" Finn asks, walking in on an already halting conversation.

 

And that was the start of it.

 

Poe and Rey get overly used to trading glances as Finn pines after Rose. Poe gives him tips over war papers, and Rey gives her own gruff advice from up in the  _ Falcon _ . And Finn never had this, so they can't begrudge him, not that they would.

 

Poe snorts at his ever mounting supply of paperwork. "How come death comes with so much signing?"

 

"Well, because the universe hates you," Rey tells him sensibly. She had her own stack in front of her. Turns out that Luke had left everything related to Jedi matters in her name, including food supply for orphanages on various planets, the bastard.

 

"That's what I thought. Any good gossip?"

 

"Betk, in Engineering, has a thing for Roth, who has a thing for Betk's sister."

 

"Hmm. That'll be fun. Rose doesn't like men." He has a glint in his eye.

 

"Huh?" Rey looks up.

 

"Well, she kissed Finn because of the looming mortality thing."

 

"How'd he take it?" Rey asks, genuine wary in her voice. She liked them together, all personal feelings aside.

 

"Pretty damn well."

 

"Good."

 

And across space, Phasma steals a plane. She has an angry scar across her face and twenty-six of those who were loyal. She would not follow an angry child into a pointless war. She'd looked Finn in the eye and couldn't tell why they were on opposite sides. They found Maz  or Maz found them. She doesn’t know how to feel about it, except for a sense of relief.

 

"You are efficient," she tells Phasma as they scrub down the bar. It’s not much, but it comes from Maz, which gives it something. “And you are trying,” Maz adds, which yeah, okay, Phasma takes a little more seriously. But she doesn’t know how she feels about it.

 

And she'd been cut from her armor. She wore rough clothes and boots with holes in them, when she wore boots at all. The refugees kept pouring in, and Stormtroopers learned to change babies and comfort younglings.

 

"Tell me a story," one insisted as Phasma laid the kid in a bed.

 

She sighs. She didn't know any, but that wasn't true. "Once, there was a man named FN-I mean, Finn. His name was Finn. He was dark like the night sky and when he walked into a room, he lit it up like the stars. He brought light. Once, he destroyed a star killer base. This is how it happened."

 

She didn't know all the names. She knew enough to paint her damnation as a savior. She said nothing of the leader, a blank-faced statue. She didn't know enough to see a woman bleeding inside metal.

 

Eventually the kid fell asleep.

 

Maybe Phasma wasn't going to throw her lot in with the Resistance, yet another structure promising to bring light to the galaxy. She didn't have that kind of faith. But she meets them anyways.

 

Poe sees her across the bar during a clandestine run. She grips her blaster tighter, and swears under her breath. She has twenty-four at her back. She knows five exits out of here and the key to a fighter hangs around her neck. She doesn't run. She doesn’t know how to feel about it.

 

And Poe isn't Leia's protege for naught. He nods politely, waits until his contact doesn't shoots him and gives up the information, and siddles over. "Nice to see you outside the amor and you shooting at me."

 

"Maz knows who I am," she defends.

 

Poe of the months before would've shot her, drank a beer, and left. Hell, two weeks ago, he'd punch her in the tit, done a shot, and kiss Jess 'cause he brought fuckin' ships down. But there were twenty Resistance folks a planet away, and he knows that look in her eyes. He sees it in everybody living by threads. He sees it in the mirror.

 

"You still going by 'Phasma?'" he asks instead.

 

Poe had a bunch of hopeful souls hanging off him, some of whom he'd rubbed off on, and often too, he'd put it, if people asked. But they hadn't. Leia had shot him, and hung her hopes on old soldiers and legends. So, Poe had a little bit more understanding for people doing the best they could. Although, if Finn wanted to kill her in cold blood, Poe would be right fucking there. Kylo Ren on the other hand-

 

"Yes," Phasma replies because she doesn't know what else to do. And Poe nods. And that's that. They go separate ways.

 

And maybe she does end up in the Resistance in a fashion, trading guns and lies in Maz's bar. She has folk, folk who deserve better than a child in black cloth. Phasma never gives up her name, never learns to soften hands that reach for a blaster. But she gets better at telling tales to children. That's nothing to scoff at. Any softness is a different kind of bravery than Jedi would preach.

 

Or maybe, just maybe, it's the balance they fight after.

 

Chewie is old, older than most his kind who live in forests and huts. People are scared of him, but the damn birds, ones that look like bloody penguins, aren't. He can't eat them. Han loved birds, when he was a kid. He humes to get Rey to drift off on the long rides, songs from days before the Empire, before Han, before all of it.

 

"You think you and Han were any fucking better? You think your hope didn't cut at me then?" he snarls at Luke before they leave. "Damn your Jedi pride, moisture farmer. I knew your father, and he wasn't worth saving any more than Kylo Ren."

 

Ben was his kid. Chewie was the third person to hold the baby, wrapped up in scrap clothes because Leia wanted to do one more run through the outer rim. They’d all been on the run, back in those days. They’d all been patchwork heroes, as heroes should be, in a way. So he let Rey nail herself in a space coffin because Jedi are boneheaded, and definitely deserve each other. He knew them. He wouldn't love Rey the way he did if she didn't everyone could be brought over. But they had to want it. And that wasn't Ben.

 

He chuffs songs at Rey because they were all young to him, and any softness in a war was not to be scoffed off. Han, who loved birds before he could fly and flew because he wanted to be a bird, would argue but that was most of their relationship.

 

He  _ missed _ him.

 

Rey rewires the  _ Falcon _ . It's nothing against Han, but some parts don't fit well anymore. Finn fits right over her shoulder. His hands fit so well in hers, but so do Poe's.

 

"Wookies have triads," Chewie instructs when she's snarling at whatever the fuck  _ that _ was supposed to be in the control panel.

 

"Hmmm?" She's not paying attention. If that coil moves, there won't be any more Resistance. Chewie waits for her to finish up.

 

"Wookies have triadic relationships to better support each other and raise children," he says when she's done.

 

"Okay," she says, not getting it.

 

Chewie snarls under his breath. "You, Poe, and Finn need to stop pussy footing around, and get to it!"

 

"What?"

 

Chewie feverently wishes for the whiny bitch Luke Skywalker. "You all need to fuck each other. Just not here," he added as an afterthought.

 

Rey turned bright red and dropped the wrench. Chewie chuckles to himself. She left pretty quick after that. They reminded him of Han and Leia, the early days when they didn't know their asses from their heads.

 

Finn didn't know what he was doing. He stands in front of Poe's door, and asks the man for help on sex.

 

"What?" Poe gets out. BB-8 buzzes around the corner curiously.

 

"Sex. Maybe that's why Rose didn't like me."

 

Poe rubes at his neck. "Ah, Buddy, that wasn't it. Rose doesn't like males. It wasn't anything about you."

 

"Oh."

 

"Yeah."

 

"I was trying to flirt," Finn gets out. "With you."

 

"Oh."

 

"Yeah."

 

"Do you-" Poe clears his throat"-Want to continue?"

 

"Yes, please."

 

Rey joins them eventually. They manage it between them all, sparks in the ashes.

 

The day Phasma joins the Resistance is the day Leia Organa dies. They end up holed up against Maz's bar. They have about twenty ex-Stormtroopers returning fire. There's a whole battalion on the way. There’s always a next fight to be won.

 

"You mist get these orders to Poe Dameron," she gets told by Leia. Phasma nods. Leia dies. She and her twenty make it out, along with Maz, who can no longer stand to be neutral.

 

Sparks in the ashes, indeed. It's more like they are their own light.

 

Phasma meets Finn one day, not FN-whatever the numbers were. They meet while Phasma is bleeding, carrying Leia’s orders in her bones. Poe catches Finn, and gives them a place to fight. Maybe they will never be best friends, these soldiers. Phasma is here because she had twenty people to get to safety, and she would not abandon them to a sulky child.

 

“You like her,” Finn accuses Poe one day.

 

“I do,” Poe agrees.

 

“I do too,” Rey adds.They’re laying in Poe’s bed since it’s the biggest. 

 

“Okay,” Finn says finally. He doesn’t ask for their justification.

 

So, Poe doesn’t say that Phasma looks at them like Leia used to, like she’ll die before she lets anything hurt them, her soldiers. And Rey doesn’t talk about Jakku. She doesn’t talk about the traders who taught her how to speak foreign languages. And softness is always been a learned skill to her, to all of them.

 

Anakin shows up next to Ben Solo after his son dies. Obi-Wan would talk about how leaving the world was a choice, but his son is still dead at the hands of his grandson. It doesn’t matter how you try to tilt your head to see those facts.

 

He show up in Ben’s room. He looms over his grandson because he’s a dick, that hasn’t changed with time.

 

“Boo,” he mutters under his breath. Ben bolts out of his bed, shirtless. “Okay, first you need to put a shirt on. We can’t do this when you’re like that. Seriously, what are you eating? People?” Anakin pauses. “Younglings?”

 

“What? Who are you?”

 

“I’m Anakin Skywalker, or as you like to worship me, Darth Vader.” Ben promptly shuts up, even though his mouth is agape. “Right. Well, I very much regret turning to the Dark Side, and all I did there. Luke is a very nice person and is much too nice to haunt you. Me on the other hand, I have a reputation for being an obnoxious asshole.”

 

“What?”

 

“You’re stuck with me, grandson, until you realize the error of your ways, and go make nice with the Resistance.”

 

And some ghosts are dicks.

 

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. It really doesn’t matter. The point is that people are often found wanting, but maybe it doesn’t matter.

 

“I like you,” Finn says more loudly than he intends to Phasma. She turns around, with most of the people in the hanger. “I like you inspite, and sometimes because, of everything you did.”

 

“Same to you,” she says because he fueled her revolution, but she doesn’t have to love him for it. They don’t enough have to be friends to have this mutual respect.

 

And maybe that had to be enough. For now. These patchwork relationships and heroes, sparks in the night. And the galaxy hung hopes on them anyway, because they were in the right place at the right time, and didn’t know how to stop.

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of my favorites. Comments make me write more. And you should check out my other work. All my improved writing I owe to Theseus Scamander. Thank you for sharing your story. Also, I may be a little insane (my mother did not have me tested). Whenever I write a story, I get a random fave; this time it was Chewie. I have a lot of issues with tlj. I like Phasma. Also, Ben is a creep. I'm just kinda tired of Lucas selling us the "anybody can be saved, nope no not that guy." Seriously, Anakin murders younglings, and we're all just cool with it. But because Phasma hurt Finn, we all hate her. And I just, I don’t know guys. I like the book thief. I’m not sure about the ending, but here we are.


End file.
